


you can't go down crying

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 03:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11072703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: Sirius is no less suicidal at thirty-two than he was at nineteen, but these days she has to pretend not to notice.





	you can't go down crying

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I've added an author's note and it might be longer than the actual story

On the fifteenth of February Emmeline stays overnight at Grimmauld Place because tomorrow is the sixteenth and it’s been a while since she was able to have that day with someone who understood.

A while, in this case, being fourteen years.

 

The angels haunt her dreams and she wakes early, although not early enough to beat Sirius, who is sorting through the mail on the kitchen table. He doesn’t look any more tired than usual but even so she suspects he didn’t bother attempting sleep.

She nods at him warily, reaching for the second tumbler of firewhiskey beside his empty glass. She missed him for a long, long decade but now that they’re in close circuits again they rarely speak to each other. For her part Emmeline is afraid of upsetting whatever feeble balance it is that stops him from lashing out at meetings.

She doubts that reminding him of when they were hot-headed trainees will help keep his temper. It rarely ever helps her in anything.

His eyes flick up to her from the table. “Do you…” His voice is croaky; three years not enough to wipe away a decade of dementors. “I have a theory about suicides, if you want?”

She swallows heavily, memories dragging her down. She hadn’t been sure if he would remember the church; every time she sees something familiar in him she is shocked that it wasn’t taken away.

“No.” She answers calmly, “Tell me about something else.”

 

By the time the impromptu theorising is over the sun is high in the sky and most of the inhabitants of number 12 have stuttered to their feet. Some of them, when passing through the kitchen, have joined in on certain topics (Remus on Wave Theory, Bill on Neuromancy), while others have ignored them (Arthur, Nymphadora) but Molly had only tutted at the bottles on the table when she came through to prepare breakfast a few minutes ago.

Emmeline considered asking Sirius if he wanted to adjourn but held her tongue at the last moment. His eyes were more alert than she had seen in a while – funny, which people registered as foes on an instinctual level.

Sirius banishes the bottle – either an apology or a taunt, and she hates that she can’t tell anymore, when once his nuances were hers to translate – and taps his wand on the table in a familiar beat.

She recognises it at once; something deep in her magic calling her to sit a little straighter, hold a little stiller, but she can’t pull the feeling to the forefront of her mind and put a name to it.

Her forehead wrinkles as she tries to name it until her intense stare is interrupted by a plate landing in front of her. Time, for a heartbeat, stills.

“1983.” Remus says, sitting next to her. And the memory of the tune slots into place as simply as a knife to a block – autumn 1983, the first big crisis after the war, how had she ever forgotten? Dale Florence had been a year above her at school; he’d been twenty-seven when he’d been cleared of any Death Eater involvement and attempted to snare the minister’s mind – killing her in the process.

Now, in 1995, Sirius inclines his head to Remus and ceases the tapping.

“How did you hear it?”

“Oh, one of the guards probably.” Sirius says casually, “I don’t think he was placed near us.”

“He shouldn’t have been, no.” She agrees, “They put the Occlumens’ away from other people.”

“The insanity makes us malleable, I know.” Sirius says pleasantly, clearly not minding that she was expressing rules he’d learnt alongside her as though she were his teacher.

Its hearing him refer to himself as part of an ‘us’ that does it for her – sends the memories, emotions and loneliness tumbling up and over – she’s standing up when she comes back to herself; towering over her friend’s sitting form, shaking with something, her throat hoarse as though she’d been shouting for hours.

A silver goblet hovers in front of her.

She snarls and grabs it, reaching back to force it at Sirius, but unsurprised when it freezes again as soon as her hand lets go.

 

They used to play this on low-tide days at work. Throwing anything to hand at the other and seeing who had the most concentration and awareness to stop it in its path. She pushes at the goblet, wandless and wordless both, more as an experiment than a hope of success.

Unexpectedly, it moves forward a little and she smirks at Sirius, who narrows his eyes in return and stands up to join her.

The other breakfast-goers stare, a little confused, at their standoff.

After a few lengthy seconds, the goblet falls with a clatter. Emmeline is unable to guess as to which one of them dropped concentration first – or if they both did at too close a time to choose.

“Tell me about suicides then.” She says, sitting down again as though nothing had happened.

Sirius’ eyes soften when he joins her. Beside them, Remus inhales a small breath; presumably at realisation of the date. Remus had had nothing to do with the massacre and almost every day was a monument to something – that was the way with wars.

“The magical community boasts far fewer suicides than our muggle counterpart.” He begins, haltingly. “I would think, at least partly, because of our solid knowledge that death is not always the end – and as such offers neither silence nor absolution.”

He speaks of suicide with a matter-of-fact voice as though discussing some everyday action – like speaking, or eating. Emmeline supposes that to someone who’s first try of dying was at the age of seven, it is ordinary.

“I haven’t been able to discover any ghost, or story of, who has taken their own life – and although that can partly be put down to an unwillingness to admit it, it seems unlikely that none of the other spirits would have gossip to share. The obvious idea, of course, is that no one comes back; certainly the most common reason ghosts give as to why they stay is fear of what comes after but if you wish to take your own life you wouldn’t want to stay here.” He gestures to indicate society, but only increases the impression that he’s speaking from experience.

“But,” He pauses and something intangible hangs in the air. “But another part of wanting to take your life is a test to other people – to see who cares enough to find you before it takes. And it seems eminently unlikely that no one with that much despair would not want to know if they were missed.”

Emmeline licks her lips; the conversation, like most she has with Sirius, straddles the border between intellectualism and emotion too tightly to show which response is wanted.

She looks to her right instead to see Remus’ face – just as stricken as she would have predicted.

“I think,” Sirius continues, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes by staring at the table, “That in accordance to this, and also to the debate on whether taking one’s own life is brave or cowardly, that suicides lay the groundwork – or perhaps the entirety – of poltergeists.”

He stops and looks up at her, awaiting a response.

 

Again, time halts.

 

“He thought they were angels.” She says at last.

 

Sirius continues with his theory, as though she had said anything else.

“After returning to find out your impact it’s easy to imagine that you either go mad from regret, or because you were right all along. When someone acknowledges an attempt at killing oneself as a ‘cry for attention’ they both shift the blame away from themselves and pile it higher on top. Of course someone who goes that far needs attention. Of course you could have helped if you’d answered. Who wouldn’t come back from that hating everyone?”

Not you apparently, Emmeline doesn’t answer.

It isn’t one of his more solid theories, largely because he has no way of gathering information stuck inside, but partly because even Sirius has some level of self-care and does not want to dive too deep into the psych of someone with nothing to live for.

 

“He thought they were angels.”

“Yes.” Sirius says sadly, reaching across the table to grasp her hand.

“Saint Valentine’s Massacre.” Remus says, half confirmation, half commiseration.

They nod slightly, in sync, before Emmeline snorts.

“Such a stupid name. Not even creatively bad like some of them were. Do you remember we used to take bets on it?” She says to Sirius, thoughtlessly. He surprises her with his nod.

“On what the press would call the tragedies.” He says to Remus, “And the closest would win – what did they win Em?” The question grants him a pained look on his wasted face – frozen solid while trying to chase something down.

“Barty’s chess trophy I think.” She answers with a fond grin. “His wife made him bring it in, you remember?” Sirius nods, and they share a happy thought to the teasing they’d put him through for that. It hurts to think of Barty – Bartemius now, so people know who she means. “Did you forgive him?” She asks, sudden curiosity overtaking her common sense.

“I expect so.” Sirius says dully. “He died you know.”

“Yes. I went to his funeral.” It had only been a few months ago; a sparsely attended affair now that everyone was all too aware that he had been human. That he had been breakable. She’d been the only Auror there: it turned out that no one remembered all the really good things Bartemius Crouch did as Head of Magical Law Enforcement and only that one time he decided that they should be allowed to use the same spells the enemy used on them. Emmeline wasn’t sure, but she suspected a lot of her ex-colleagues now thought she sympathised with that desire. She still wasn’t certain that she didn’t.

“You can still hate the dead.” Remus says slowly, aware that he’s infiltrated something he didn’t understand. Emmeline expects that to Remus, Bartemius is only the man who didn’t get Sirius a trial and thus save them all a lot of heartbreak.

Sirius shrugs. “I do still hate a lot of dead people. Mostly Father, admittedly. Barty was a good boss, even if he did turn out to be a rubbish jailor.”

Remus nods. All three of them know he doesn’t really understand.

Sirius tips his glass of firewhiskey in her direction. “To those left behind.”

She and Remus echo him and then both men pretend not to notice her wiping her eyes.

 

Silence reigns between them.

 

“Put that away Sirius.” Molly admonishes, startling them, gesturing to the firewhiskey. “Maybe if you weren’t drinking so early you’d have happier conversations.”

“My fault.” Emmeline says loudly. “I started us up.”

Molly looks disbelieving. Sirius shrugs. “No one’s fault Em. We didn’t kill them.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, being as this is a canon-compliant but still pretty alternate au that exists only in my head here are the backgrounds to specific things being referenced:
> 
> 1\. The Angels/Saint Valentine's Massacre:  
> So in my opinion what the Death Eaters are lacking in are big events that show off how terrible they are. Obviously, for the series to work, the adults in it couldn't be hugely competent or someone might have pointed out that back-up plans are a thing and 'putting all your eggs in one basket' is a cliche for a reason. Anyway, pointless irritation aside, the other reason this annoys me is that there's a lot of talk about how terrible it was last time with no actual specifics. Which is probably for the best if you're the sort of writer who likes writing action scenes. I'm more of a fade to black... kind of person.  
> I have a few semi-solid ideas for these events if I ever need them for a story, and this is the one with the most meat.  
> The idea is that the Death Eaters attack a large muggle church; they apparate in in clouds of smoke - adopting from the films I'm gonna say that that's a sort of spell attachment that you can use if you're, say, trying to scare a bunch of kids who've never been in battle before - and the muggles' first thought is that they are being visited by angels. The 'angels' promptly kill everyone except one of the choir boys who, idk knows a secret hideaway or something, I don't spend a lot of time in churches, the aurors arrive too late - understandably as they can't set alerts in every muggle town. Later the choir boy kills himself, again understandably.
> 
> 2\. Magical Theory  
> Mostly this is just so I can spin ideas in story but for anyone who cares (ha ha) here's some extra background.  
> So, in the books Arthur knows two unspeakables by name, which seems weird for a profession that's that explicit about not telling people things. As such, I think that during the war the unspeakables were a lot more open to collaboration, especially with other departments that were dealing first hand with the war. (Writing that out I realise it's more likely that Arthur just knew Bode and Croker from school but ah well, too late now.)
> 
> 3\. Dale Florence  
> Dark wizards don't just go away and the Wizangamot has proved itself ineffectual before. Also, hypnotism lends itself really well to occlumancy.
> 
> 4\. Hovering goblets for fun and profit  
> I enjoy thinking of auror traditions and games. Emmeline won that one, if you care (ha ha)
> 
> 5\. Any mention to Sirius' post-azkaban psyche  
> On that note I also have issues with the whole staying-sane-via-dog-mind-thing or to be more exact I have no problems with it, I think it makes quite a lot of sense, I just think that once you get past that there's a lot of exploration. Anyway the memory problem's obvious - not the film 'nice one James!' thing - littler things. (Also my memories from when my depression was at it's worst are essentially ten years of fog with some landmarks). Moving on before I get emotional...
> 
> 6\. Barty Crouch Sr  
> Most of his character problems seemed to be more personal than professional, and I quite liked his character.
> 
> I can't think of anything else that could need addressing but feel free to enlighten me otherwise.


End file.
